Week 1 update from hospital (July 13th)

Dear all you lovely thought senders,

First things first, an update: I've just made it through my first week in the hospital and things have not gotten any worse than when arrived here, in fact, they are a little bit better. After two days upside down and after Pedro moved his foot, the doctors took me out of Trendelenburg position and decided the risk of bladder or kidney infection was greater than the risk of my rupturing my membranes, and they took me off the catheter. Never knew that peeing sitting up could make me so happy!

So, where we are now is that the cervix is still open and the membrane is still in the cervix, but it doesn't seem to be getting any worse than that. If you talk to my pessimistic doctor - we'll call him Dr GD (gloom and doom) - I'm still extremely high risk and can't count on making it past tomorrow. If you talk to my optimist doctor - we'll call him Dr Cuddly - it hasn't gotten worse in a week, so there's a good chance we can hang out just like this until these babies become deliverable. I'm going with Dr Cuddly's projection.

Business aside, thank you each and every one for your fabulous good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, poems, jokes, ecards, stories and tales of your lives in the outside world. They are the fuel my soul is running on, so feel free to write anytime you feel so moved.

I want to share one comment that had me had me laughing so hard my belly monitor went beserk: "Tell Pedro and Archer, 'You boys settle down or I'll turn this uterus right around!"

Bruno has decided that the one thing he can control here is my nutrition and he's created an Excel spreadsheet to track various foods across my pregnancy nutrition needs. I swear he'll be a registered dietitian before this is done. Each day, the list of foods grows longer and the spreadsheet more complicated. I find all this charming, except when being force-fed flax seed smoothies and arugula.

I'll save telling you more for future updates, but highlights will include a description of our hospital room, which is larger than an NYC studio apt, and a recounting of my visit from a Chabad of Oregon rabbi - I know, I know. an oxymoron.

Let me sign off by sharing a poem that was sent to me, but I never fully understood it until now.

Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

And surest in the gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash that little bird
That keeps so many warm

I have heard it in the strangest land
And on the chillest sea
Yet never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

My deepest love and gratitude to everyone, Lisa
p.s. A lot of people asked why Archer is nicknamed Archer. Every time we see him on ultrasound he is arching his back and constantly moving and squirming around. I think he'll be a yoga instructor. Bruno disagrees.